MoviePass Tracks Your Movements Before and After You Go to the Movies

MoviePass, the subscription service that lets you go see a movie every single day for the impossibly low price of $10 a month, now has 2 million subscribers. Its CEO believes the company will have 5 million subscribers by the end of 2018, and that their cumulative ticket purchases through the service will account for 20 percent of all movie tickets sold in the country. You read that right; one out of every five tickets to the multiplex could come from MoviePass in a matter of months.

Now you might think to yourself “Hey, a movie ticket costs $12. MoviePass is letting me pay $10 for as many as 30 tickets in a single month. Isn’t that a really good way to lose a lot of money? How does this company stay in business?” Well, this is how. In a recent speech at the Entertainment Finance Forum, MoviePass’ Mitch Lowe explained that the company wants to monetize the data they collect from their users, not just what movies they see or what theaters they frequent but their movements even when they’re not at the theater.

Via Media Play News, Lowe reportedly told the audience for his keynote speech (“Data is the New Oil: How Will MoviePass Monetize It?”) “we know all about you”:

The data collection information elicited some nervous laughs from the industry crowd, many of whom raised their hands to show they were MoviePass subscribers. ‘We get an enormous amount of information,’ he said, noting the company knows subscribers’ addresses and can glean demographic information based on where they live. The company also can track subs via the app and a phone GPS. ‘We watch how you drive from home to the movies,’ he said. ‘We watch where you go afterwards.’

Oh. Oh cool. That’s not, like, creepy at all. If I turn around right now, is MoviePass going to be right behind me? Oy. I don’t need this in my life right now.

The not-completely-Orwellian motivation for all the data collection is for Moviepass to sell it to others, covering the cost of all those movie tickets you’re not paying for. The company envisions directing “subscribers to places to have dinner before or after a screening, for instance, getting a cut from vendors.”

Seriously, if you’re cool with Moviepass knowing what roads you like to drive on, what restaurants you eat at, the embarrassing stores you shop at, then go nuts. But you should be aware that they do know this stuff. All the movies you can watch for $10 a month doesn’t come cheap.